Where Drinking Gets You
by Telturwen
Summary: Sirius wakes up on a normal day with a normal hangover going through his normal routine until the blasted doorbell rings with a very unexpected visitor.
1. James

**A/N: **Nope, I don't own Harry Potter or any of the characters, locations, etc. Everything is J.K. Rowling's.

So this is just a short one-shot that I thought up at a party. I hadn't planned on extending it, but you never know. Please review, they always help. Other than that, I encourage you to read on and enjoy!

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**Where Drinking Gets You**

_James_**  
**

Sirius rolled out of bed and hit the alarm clock on the nightstand in one fluid motion. On the floor there happened to be the trousers he had stripped off last night and he hauled them on without a thought as to the smoky odors coming from them. Drowsily, he walked out of his room and stumbled down the stairs, his eyes all the while half closed. Seeing the blurred formation of the railing to his right, he grabbed hold of it to support his legs, which were bending without his consent.

He was weak from the previous night and the activities he participated in. He thought about the possibility that he might have had a slight hangover, but he didn't remember having alcohol. Least ways, not a _lot_ of alcohol.

Staggering clumsily as he stepped off the last stair, he only regained his footing by grasping firmly to that blessed railing. He had thought there was one more stair and had been unprepared to come into contact with the floorboards so soon.

He almost fell into the kitchen since he had to leap across the cold wooden floor tiles without support just to get into the room. It was a wonder that he was doing everything the Muggle way, but Sirius realized the most plausible explanation for this was because he had left his wand upstairs.

_Food_, he thought as his stomach gave a low growl. _Food would be good._

As he laid out a few options on the table, he gathered up the peanut butter and soda crackers in his arms and strewed them about the counter. Just as the butter knife sliced into the thick jar of mashed peanuts, the doorbell rang. Since the ringer was just outside the kitchen door, Sirius could feel the brain in his skull vibrate with the sound. He must have had more drinks than he thought.

On his way to the door, he found a grey t-shirt hanging on the couch and grabbed it, pulling it over his head. It fell to his waist as the door opened.

The doormat's occupant couldn't have been more than five foot three and her eyes held about them the sense that she had done some horrible things in her life. She was a small blonde, not unattractive, but weary-looking. Not Sirius' usual cup of tea. He still gave her a smile, though as far as smiles go for a hung over, drowsy git, it wasn't his best charmer. The blonde's expression remained the same.

"I hope I'm not interrupting anything," she said kindly. "I wouldn't want to be the cause—oh, bollocks. I thought I could do this…the thing is, I'm pregnant with your baby."

Sirius' eyelids popped open.

"My…?" The uncompleted question hung in the air between them for a while until Sirius took control of the situation. "Fuck."

- - - - -

He had offered her a drink and she had asked for water. He was now pacing the kitchen, holding his head in his hands. Spotting the two-way mirror on the table, he picked it up and whispered a fierce, "James!"

It took a moment for his best friend's face to appear in the cube, staring back at him with a grin. It faded as he spotted Sirius' expression.

"What's wrong?"

"I…_might_ have a small problem," he said quietly, holding the mirror close to his face as if he could muffle out his voice.

"What've you gotten into this time?"

James caught himself before he rolled his eyes. This made Sirius even more hesitant.

"Well, James—you know when you, uh, go out to get a drink and sometimes—"

"You had sex with a girl you met at a bar."

"Right," said Sirius, attempting to nonchalantly peek around the corner of the kitchen wall. He had only found out her name was Lizzie by asking her if she wanted to name the baby after herself. Her response had included an 'Elizabeth' so he was forced to assume. "And_ sometimes_, when that happens…"

"She's trailing after you like a little kid, isn't she?"

"If you replace one of the words, you could say that."

There was a lapse in the conversation while James thought about the statement and in the gathered time, Sirius saw him take a deep breath, resulting in a bellow of, "SIRIUS!"

"Keep your voice down!" he whispered pleadingly, mumbling, "Where's the volume knob on this thing?"

"I can't believe you!"

"Me neither!"

"I'm glad we agree on being disgusted by your stupidity!"

Sirius smacked a palm to his forehead. "James, I don't know what to do. I don't even_ remember_ this one!"

"That's your own fault! You go around boinking a bunch of girls you don't know, it's gonna come back to bite you in the ass—" Sirius was about to open his mouth when James added, "And no, I don't mean that literally."

"But I was drunk! The alcohol clouded my judgment. Actually, it didn't exactly cloud out as much as black out…"

"Then watch your intake, mate!"

"Well it's too bloody late now, innit?"

"Serves you right."

"Now that's not fair. No one deserves this."

"Is she there now?" James asked. Sirius gave a slight nod of the head. "Well, hell, go talk to her!"

"What am I supposed to say?"

"I dunno, you're the father."

Sirius eyed the mirror irritably when James made it obvious he couldn't contain his laughter.

"Sirius…you're the _father!"_

"Tons of help you are. I should have called Remus."

Without sparing James another glance, he threw the two-way onto the counter. It landed next to the peanut butter jar which was still open. He sighed as he thought about how simple life had been only thirty minutes ago.

He walked out of the kitchen with a glass of ice water in each hand. He placed one on the table in front of the blonde and raised his own.

"So," he said casually, "here's to…having a baby with Lizzie."

The expectant look on her face caused his good-natured toast to falter.

"It's Shelley, actually…"

Sirius brought the glass up to his mouth and gulped down the liquid inside, wishing desperately that it was firewhiskey.


	2. Remus

**Author's Note:** Due to a request I got from the one-shot, I decided to make another one with Remus. Same story, later on. Enjoy!

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**Where Drinking Gets You**

_Remus_

Remus opened the door to a pleasant-faced Sirius and an overheated, enchanted motorcycle.

"So, I was just in the neighborhood…"

"I live in a cottage in a secluded forest on the outskirts of a town populated by twelve farmers. What could you possibly have had to be in the neighborhood for?"

Sirius scratched his head with the hand holding his helmet. Who the hell was he fooling? Remus was smarter than James; he should've known he'd get right down to the point. But if that technique came complete with positive results, Remus would've cracked their shells of tomfoolery years ago.

"I needed fresh eggs. Man's gotta keep up his strength, right?"

Sirius grinned at his friend, but that did nothing to convince.

"What do you need that you couldn't have phoned me for?"

He hated that stupid Muggle machine. You put one part to your mouth, one part to your ear and talk. Talking into a machine wasn't logical. It wasn't reliable, either. Many a time, Remus had 'hung up' on him for no good reason. All right, there was probably a good reason, but he hadn't had the chance to make one last sarcastic comment. Sirius believed that if one wanted to talk to a person, one did it face to face—whether that meant person to person or mirror to mirror. Plus, he just really wanted to get out, clear his head, and his bike gave him the perfect opportunity to do it.

"I just wanted to—_oh!_ Is that tea?"

Sirius ran into the kitchen, passing Remus who was rolling his eyes.

Whenever Sirius had troubles and needed to ask help of Remus, it was always the really _bad_ kind of trouble, and they both knew that to be true. He had acted the same way when he'd been in trouble with the Ministry for 'created a disturbance' in their entrance hall when he went in for trial over his improper use of magic with a Muggle. Allegedly, he had opened an outlet with his powers to see up the girl's skirt, something Sirius would never contest nor admit to. It had been quite a day trying to sort all of that shit out, and Remus, the poor bloke, had been his main savior.

He was now wearing that same weary expression he wore when Sirius had come knocking on that occasion—and that was never a good sign.

Sirius sipped at his tea and looked around the room nonchalantly. "You've redecorated."

Remus put his elbows on the table and placed his chin in his intertwined fingers. "Yes, well, there isn't much else to do around here. And I got sick of reading."

"No!" said Sirius with a skeptical look. "Remus? Are you feeling okay?"

"Has it ever occurred to you, Sirius, that I do _sometimes_ do things with my day other than stick my head in books?"

The Animagus shrugged. "Not really."

Remus sighed heavily, swirling a spoon in his tea. "Well?"

"Well…"

"No, that wasn't a pass-the-time 'well'; it was a questioning 'well'."

Sirius looked at him, an eyebrow raised. "Well?"

"Yes. Well."

"Now, which 'well' is that, exactly?"

"A _question._"

"I _am_ well. Thank you, Remus."

The responsible adult never lost his temper, but Sirius was able to put him within several feet of blowing his top off. The werewolf's cheeks reddened with masked anger and his eyes were _just slightly_ ablaze.

"Honestly, Sirius," he said calmly, letting the words slide out of his mouth through a two centimeter slit, "what did you come to see me about?"

"Were you in the middle of something, Moon? Because I can tell you're in a fairly moody mood and I wouldn't want to—Merlin's teeth, I forgot!"

Sirius' gaze was genuinely apologetic and for that, he could tell, Remus had relaxed his tense shoulders somewhat. The remainder of the tension was undoubtedly because Sirius was not likely to forget the date of a full moon, so whatever had happened to bring him to his friend's cottage was obviously of great importance.

"It's all right. I didn't scratch myself up too horribly, but I did acquire a rather large gash to the gut." Seeing the look on his friend's face, he added, "My potion was…delayed."

"What do you mean, 'delayed'?" Sirius' eyes narrowed. "It was Severus, wasn't it?"

Remus didn't look directly at him, but muttered, "Possibly."

"I'm going to scramble his insides, burn his slimy hair, and _then_ sick myself on him so he'll know just what you—"

"Sirius, calm down!" said Remus, surprised at his friend's general protectiveness. "I'm fine. Just a few days of rest would be nice."

"I—" He shook his mop of hair. "Than I'm really sorry I have to tell you this."

Senses alert, eyes open a little bigger than they were used to being, Remus quietly asked, "Have to tell me what?"

A giant sigh accompanied by hunched shoulders and a drained expression met that question. For some reason, even when he could with all the things he had gotten in trouble with before, he wasn't able to look him in the eye when he said it.

"I, sort of…well, accidentally…got a girl…preg…"

Nor, apparently, could he bring himself to say the word of his offense. It didn't matter, either way, because Remus had stood up at 'girl'. The puppy dog gaze Sirius aimed in his direction only made his eyes flare a bit more.

"Sirius," he said softly, but with vehemence barely notable if it hadn't been looked for, "if you're pulling a fast one on me, I swear to everything holy that I will bite your ass off this time next month."

"No, no, no, Remus. I was…_very_ serious about the issue at hand."

Shoulders tensed even more. The position Remus was in made Sirius feel like a frightened child being reprimanded for breaking a priceless family heirloom—needless to say, he knew exactly what that felt like. Remus' hands were placed on the table, but they were shaking slightly as if they wanted to grasp something and rip it to pieces.

"Yes, you were _very _Sirius about this whole thing, weren't you? You couldn't act responsible for five minutes if someone paid you with women!" Sirius had opened his mouth to protest, but quickly shut it. "I can't believe you. You act, but you really don't think about anything you do. You don't realize the consequences. Come to think of it, you probably don't care. How are you planning on dealing with this, Sirius? Are you going to provide for this woman and your baby? With what? You have just meager enough wages now to provide for yourself! Does she even want you to help her? How can you even be sure that it's your baby anyway?"

"Now that's an easy one. She said she hadn't been laid in…" Sirius stopped short on the information he was about to convey because of the riled look on Remus' face. "We…we just know."

"Splendid. So you got a could-have-been-respectable woman pregnant. She could have gone off and gotten herself a good paying job, a loving _normal_ husband, a promising future. Now, she has no future. I hope that one night was damn well worth it, Sirius."

"Actually, I, uh, don't exactly recall…"

Remus stared at him for three minutes straight before he took his hands off the table and wrung them around a spare towel that had been on the back of a chair.

"Where's a knife? I need to chop up something."

As he walked past, Sirius held his hands protectively around the crease in his trousers.

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**A/N:** Better than the first one? Worse? Tell me why please! 


	3. Peter

**Where Drinking Gets You  
**_Peter_

Sirius picked up the odd machine's so-called 'receiver' end and looked at it curiously. There were many buttons that lit up, each showing a number. Some displayed weird symbols, but he ignored them. He held the phone up to his ear and heard an annoying sort of buzzing sound.

"Hello?" Sirius said quietly, but no one answered him. "Hello? Helloooo?" He listened intently for a minute, but all he heard was the buzzing sound. Pulling the receiver away from his ear, he stared down at it, irritated and at the beginnings of anger.

"I need to speak to Peter Pettigrew," said Sirius loudly into the phone. The buzzing only continued, and Sirius cheeks reddened. He slapped his hand onto the lit buttons and slammed the phone pungently down on the table. He then sat down in his armchair, heaving in a giant breath.

It was a lot more difficult than Remus made it out to be. Maybe it was because he was half Muggle and knew how to work the thing, but the telephone of the Muggle was a curse. And it didn't work anyways._Bloody machine._ He was too tired from his visit with Remus to go to Peter's house as well. He'd Apparated his bike out of the country with him when he left. Remus had trampled all over his spirits, and in all honesty, there weren't many to be trampled on. Peter was just someone he had to tell, he no longer cared for face-to-face conversation.

"Hullo?" said the phone crisply. "Sir?"

Sirius jumped at the voice, looking at the phone on the table with interest. He picked it up and said, "Uh, hello?"

"Good evening, sir," the phone answered. "What can I do for you?"

It sounded like a female, and Sirius imagined a very beautiful woman with long, brown hair in a small cocktail dress, holding a glass of white wine…and he thought of several things she could do for him. Quite suddenly, a mental image of Shelly's pleading eyes crossed his thoughts and he shook his head violently, his hair smacking him across the face.

"Sir?"

"Sorry," he said, holding a hand to his face to rub the picture out of his eyes. "Um, who are you?"

"I'm an operator," she—it—said, sounding a little confused.

An operator? Sounded like she was part of some sort of scientific experiment. Sirius had the briefest urge to hang up the phone on it—her.

"Well, uh, can you give me Peter Pettigrew's 'number'?" Sirius asked, uncertain if that was the correct term. He'd heard Remus say it once while talking to James. And it made sense, being as this 'number' consisted of seven numbers. That was just about the only name Muggles gave something that actually made sense. Though, he thought critically, they called it _a_ number, not _numbers_, and how much sense did that make? There wasn't just one number, there were seven. Why didn't they call it a person's 'numbers'?

"Of course, sir," she said pleasantly. "I'll connect you."

A shot of cold fright spread through Sirius so fast he couldn't control it. _Connect me?_ he thought in a panic. He was perfectly fine! He wasn't broken. What did she mean, 'connect'? But before the thoughts could be processed in full, Sirius heard a ringing noise in the phone in place of the voice. It was more familiar to him than all the rest, because the last time James had handed a phone to him, that was the noise he'd heard. Then Remus would pick up and they would speak. It was a conversation without faces. It was bizarre was what it was.

"Hello?"

"Pete?" Sirius asked. He'd recognized the voice, but it sounded…happy.

"Sirius?" The cheeriness faded from his tone instantly. _How rude_, he thought.

"Yeah, it's me, Worm. What you doing?"

Peter took a bit to say, "Nothing."

"You hesitated," Sirius said skeptically.

"H-hesitate? I wasn't hesitating."

"Now you're stuttering."

"No…I'm not."

"What are you _doing_ over there, Pete—oooh," Sirius tried to stifle his laughter. "Sorry I interrupted you, mate."

"I'm not masturbating, Sirius, I'm waiting for a girl!"

"Well, you might as well start then."

"I mean, I have a date!"

Sirius tried to imagine for a moment a girl who would agree to go out with Peter, but he came up blank. "So what's she look like?"

Peter sighed. "She's a really sweet girl and she's great at—"

"I'm seeking an attractiveness scale, Peter," Sirius said, annoyed.

"She's hot, Seer."

"No, really," he said, getting more irritated that he was putting it off. She must have been pretty damn ugly to be going out with the bottom of the barrel, or else just have seriously bad taste.

"I just told you!" Peter said. "She's hot. I'm dating a small, blond, hot girl. I know it's hard for you to understand, but it's the truth."

Sirius stayed quiet for some time, but it's not like he could keep it in forever. He burst out with his barking laughter. "Okay, Pete…you have fun jerkin' it out."

"You're such a bastard, Sirius."

He let a few more chuckles escape before he said, "Yeah, I know."

"I'm hanging up now."

Sirius shook himself out of his laughter and yelled. "Shit! No, Pete, I forgot to tell you!"

Peter sighed again and said, in a forced tone, "What is it?"

"Well, I sort of a got a girl pregnant," Sirius said, quietly.

"Okay."

Sirius stared at the phone for a moment before saying an expectant, "That's it?"

"It's not like we all never saw it coming," Peter said snidely.

"_What's that supposed to mean?_"

"Good luck, Sirius."

The same buzzing sound came back on the other end, so he placed the phone back on the receiver.

"Oh yeah, _I'm_ the bastard. They should have heard themselves, the insensitive sons of bitches."

Sirius sat down with his head in his hands. He'd get through it somehow; he always did. He just wasn't prepared this time.

Babies were easy to take care of, right? They just slept and ate. He could handle that—he wasn't sure about handling Shelley's pregnancy though.

Sirius let himself fall over across the couch and didn't force himself up for an hour and a half.

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**A/N:**Well, that's it. A little Christmas present for you. I hope you liked it and have been intrigued enough to read some of my other stories. Thanks for sticking with me, and also thank you bunches to every person who commented! It means a lot :) 


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